Thread the Loom
Zoe Hillyard, Senior Lecturer BA(Hons) Textile Design and RAAD researcher, reflects here on a joint project between textiles students and Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
Thread the Loom at IKON gallery in 2025 brought together a web of people passionate about weaving and the value of craftsmanship, to focus attention on the importance of creative education in providing space and expertise where skills can be passed on and explored. Placing a loom in the gallery turned the space into a working studio, igniting curiosity and dialogue spanning heritage, materials, technology, culture, consumerism and creativity. Re-Thread The Loom at Parkside Gallery in 2026 provided an opportunity to reflect on the woven pieces created by the six makers that undertook the IKON micro-residencies, highlighting their different working methods and concepts through diagrams, artefacts and materials, to show how weaving remains a highly relevant language of expression.
The symposium in May, Clay, yarn and ink: The interplay between heritage crafts and contemporary art, provided space to reflect on IKON’s trilogy of exhibitions that have placed makers and making at the heart of the audience experience – Start the Press! Thread the Loom and Break the Mould. It enabled the barriers and inequalities that can limit engagement with and progression in creative practice to be discussed. The vital role of community provision in addressing some of the challenges was celebrated. Participants universally emphasised the importance of building tacit knowledge through hands-on making as a means of processing their worlds, and of risk-taking and experimentation as vital to any learning process. Connecting audiences to making and makers had clearly been enriching for all involved.
The co-ordination and curation roles involved in this collaboration complemented my wider field of practice which is largely through a material and construction-based language rooted in textile heritage and it was a huge privilege to have helped strengthen the regional support network that connects makers, educators and the creative industries.
Work created by Mahawa Keita for Thread the Loom will featured in BCU’s 1000 Threads event showcasing Art, Fashion, Jewellery, Media, Design and Textiles at X10 Building, Oozells Square, Birmingham from 15 June – 2 July. Break the Mould runs at IKON until 6 September.
